The invention relates to printwheel setting apparatus and more particularly to printwheel setting mechanisms for postage meters.
Printwheel setting mechanisms are well known and are described for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,054 issued to Buan, et al. in respect to printwhels for value printing in a flat-bed printer. In addition to the value printing, postage meters typically are required to print a date, and normally allow selection of a slogan for printing on a mailpiece. Some postage metering devices serve as parcel registers to provide shipping information for parcel carrier services. These registers are typically required to print a parcel identification number (PIN) for each parcel. The number is normally increased in sequence for successvie parcels.
Typically, in conventional postage meters the selection of the date and slogan will be done manually. The indexing of the parcel identification number then is normally done automatically. Thus, each of the various printing elements are separately mounted and separately actuated by the operator or from the register.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,398,458 discloses a date-setting mechanism for automatically setting a date in response to a keyboard actuation. U.S. Pat. No. 4,649,849 also discusses an aspect of date-setting through the keyboard. U.S. Pat. No. 4,321,867 discloses a PIN number setting device for a drum-type postage meter.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,832,946 to Lupkas discloses a value printing mchanism using a solenoid actuated drive for setting and encoding printwheels.
It is an object of the invention to provide a setting mechanism for printwheels.
It is a further object to provide an automatic printwheel setting device for a postage meter.
It is a particular object to provide an automatic dater, particularly for postage meter, operating under control of a microcomputer.